Wasn’t This a Night Game

Take My Hand

The labor theorists in the room reacted in two distinct ways.

One group silently pored over the documents of the Mamon followers, saying nothing.

The other group was enraged.

“Lies! We would never do this!”

“Becoming the warden of a camp, ferreting out, brainwashing, and torturing counter-revolutionaries? Me? I would never! Not my fellow workers! I could never become someone who tortures them!”

I quietly waited for them to vent their anger.

Waited for them to deny reality and pour out all the anxiety and fear inside them.

For thirty minutes, the labor theorists buzzed and argued like a storm, then one by one, they sank back into their seats.

Now, everyone was silent.

Kal Lenaro had completely set down the paper, and was trembling, his face buried in his hands.

I looked over the contents of the paper he’d dropped.

A future where he would intentionally cause famine, starving countless people to death.

A future where he would become a dictator, taking the lives of countless people until the moment of his death, creating not a worker’s paradise but a country where everyone was equally poor.

A future where, fearing the existence of counter-revolutionaries, he would obsessively eliminate countless political enemies under the guise of a spy hunt.

Then, finally, a future where he couldn’t trust a soul, ruling a vast empire from his room via letters, only to collapse from a brain hemorrhage. But because he was a paranoid mess, his guards couldn’t enter the room to get him treatment, and he died.

And the documents meticulously detailed the future where his corpse lay enshrined in a glass case, worshipped by generations of Labor Theorists.

“It’s a lie! I wouldn’t become this! I, I only wanted to help the workers. To improve the lives of the oppressed!” Carl Renaro roared, a desperate expulsion.

“Mammon is gone now, isn’t he, Holy One? So this future won’t come to pass! Labor Theory! My comrades!! I!! I couldn’t possibly become so monstrous!! Please, tell me it’s not true!!”

I offered no reply.

I already had.

They simply couldn’t accept it.

One of the Labor Theorists muttered, as if hollowed out,

“I’d rather it was just unbelievable drivel. It’s so convincing it’s terrifying. If I were… If this plan actually unfolded… I might really become the person in these documents.”

Another Labor Theorist agreed.

“My past. My personality. My traumas and beliefs. It’s all been factored into this plan. How could they possibly know all this?”

Someone suddenly started to laugh.

“What have we been fighting for all this time? If this is how it ends, what was the point of all our suffering and effort?”

“We’ll end up hurting, starving, and destroying more workers than anyone else!!”

Someone retorted.

“Mammon is gone! We must struggle again for revolution! Aren’t the workers still suffering and oppressed?!”

“To hear such weak words from comrades of the revolution!”

“Are we just supposed to stand by and watch our fellow workers get exploited by the capitalists?!”

Another rebuttal exploded forth.

“Even without Mammon! What guarantee do we have that what’s written in these documents won’t come to pass?!”

“The trumpeters were just accelerating these plans. Everything in this plan is still carried out by our own hands!! We’re talking about a future that we volunteered to bring to fruition!”

“We didn’t know the future then, but now we do. We can’t just sit idly by! We have to disband! Dissolve the organization and stop all of this right now!!”

“What about the suffering workers?!”

“It would be better if we didn’t exist at all! If the future in those documents comes true, it would be better to languish under the capitalists!!”

“You’re saying we should let countless workers suffer at the hands of capitalists!!”

A few more meaningless shouts were exchanged before silence fell again.

The Labor Theorists now wore faces of utter bewilderment, unsure of what to do.

They couldn’t remain still, nor could they move.

Confusion and fear replaced the sense of duty and passion that had burned so brightly in their eyes.

And more than anything, an emptiness began to settle.

The labor theorist, destined to become a concentration camp commandant, to endlessly brainwash and torture workers to their deaths, had now begun to weep.

The passionate young female labor theorist, who had declared she would fight for women’s rights, was blankly staring into the void.

The soon-to-be head of an intelligence organization, a human butcher famous for fabricating charges and torturing people, chuckled with a hollow face as he smoked.

And at the very core of all these desperate futures…

The future dictator, the future slaughterer.

The man who would become an idol in a glass case was looking at me.

“Saint. Please help us.”

The voice, once filled with conviction, was gone.

The ardent demeanor, absent.

The eyes that had sworn to defy death now held only a welling, watery despair.

“Where should we go?”

He asked me that question, his expression utterly lost.

I gave the sobbing revolutionary the only answer that made sense.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

I smiled at them.

Their faces were full of despair and crushing defeat, but it filled me with a strange hope.

Not yet.

Not yet were they concentration camp commandants torturing people, bloodthirsty dictators, or mad slaughterers who had killed more workers than any capitalist.

They were simply beings afraid of their own futures, despairing at the very sight of them.

Beings who still retained a flicker of compassion for the workers.

Not yet twisted and broken by the lure of power.

They were beings who feared such a future.

Beings who still possessed the potential to walk a righteous path.

“Aren’t you all revolutionaries? Then you must revolutionize.”

“But… don’t you know what kind of outcome a revolution will bring?”

“I do. Which is why you must revolutionize in a way unlike any before.”

“A different kind of revolution…?”

“Come under the grace of the Grace Order. And with the influence of the Grace Order and the capital of the Karma Company behind you, you can change the Empire.”

I grinned at Karl Renard, whose jaw had dropped open in utter astonishment.

“Not bullets and bombs, but capital and law – become revolutionaries who strike capitalists with those.”

*

As one might expect, immediate pushback erupted.

“Are you telling us to become the hounds of capitalists?!”

“Isn’t Karma Company ultimately a capitalist enterprise?! To work under religious zealots and capitalists?!”

The labor theorists sputtered their frustrations, but a single sentence from me immediately silenced them all.

“I intend to use the power of Karma Company and the Grace Order to make you one of the administrative organs recognized by the Imperial Family. A direct affiliate, no less.”

Underground terrorists becoming one of the Imperial Family’s direct administrative organs.

At this preposterous notion, the labor theorists seemed utterly lost for words, only blinking.

But I was earnest.

I slowly unveiled my plan to them.

“Workers suffering under the avarice of capitalists are still scattered throughout the Empire. And the resentments of those workers are being used to fatten the bellies of demon worshippers and devotees of dark gods. Even the match factory in the capital was being operated that way, and there was a Mammon in the Scrapyard. Using this justification, we can move the Pantheon.”

The Pantheon was not a power institution, but considering the number of believers scattered across the Empire and their activities in various sectors of society, it was an organization that could not be easily ignored.

And the Pantheon was an organization that I could wield like a limb. No order would be able to refuse the justification that the power of dark gods and demon worshippers must be weakened through the promotion of workers’ rights.

“Moreover, if we utilize Karma Company’s connections and money, creating new laws by swaying the Senate will not be difficult. An unimpeachable cause, strong public support, and Imperial approval – you will likely be absorbed into one of the Empire’s official administrative bodies with considerable speed.”

“That’s… absurd…”

“With my influence, I can certainly make it so. Once you become a legitimate organization, you will spread throughout the Empire, investigating infringements on worker’s rights and the exploitation of labor, punishing the capitalists responsible.”

“Are you speaking truthfully?”

“Yes. I am. Afterward, you will revitalize the economies of those regions and create quality jobs for the workers. Karma Company and the Imperial Family will assist you.”

My words sparked another wave of murmurs among the labor theorists.

“Work with the powerful and the capitalists, you say?”

“What kind of revolution is that?! We’d be leashed dogs!”

“Is this truly the direction we should be taking?”

“Are we abandoning the revolution to become slaves to the existing system?!”

As if unable to accept it, the murmurs grew louder and louder, but when Karl Lanero raised his hand, they all fell silent.

“If the Grace Order and Karma Company exploit the workers… then what happens?”

“If they commit exploitation deserving of punishment, they will be punished according to the law. Conversely, if you become consumed by extremism, showing signs of corruption and perversion as written in Mammon’s ledgers… the Grace Order and Karma Company will stop you.”

“An organization completed by mutual checks and balances, then?”

“Precisely.”

I extended my hand to Karl Lanero.

“Relinquish your lust for power. Relinquish your hatred, your rage, your violence. Instead, recall the compassion you felt for the suffering workers. And do not merely exploit that compassion, but help them escape their vulnerable plight.”

“……..”

“Do not seek to annihilate the capitalists, but to forge a world where they can create decent, quality employment. Instead of focusing only on their shortcomings and destroying them, create the conditions where their strengths can flourish.”

I gaze at the man who will become a warden.

“Do not employ your interrogation skills to abuse workers and sustain a dictator’s power, but to expose the misdeeds of the capitalists.”

I gaze at the man who, as head of intelligence, will be capable of fabricating crimes out of thin air.

“Employ your sharp insight to investigate the misfortunes of the workers, and make them known to all.”

I gaze at the woman who advocated for women’s rights.

“Do not incite women to hate men. Instead, strive to foster a world where men and women embrace each other’s differences and love one another. A world where both women and men are treated fairly, according to their talents.”

I gaze at all the labor theorists.

“Be driven by compassion and sympathy, not hatred and rage. This world needs you. There are still countless workers suffering. What does it matter if you receive help from capitalists and those in power? Isn’t the goal for the workers to live well and smile? Isn’t that why you gathered here?”

I extend my hand even further.

“Take my hand.”

The labor theorists did not respond immediately.

A silence, so profound it was frightening, settled heavily in the room.

And after a long moment.

Karl Renaro cautiously grasped my hand.

Gripping my hand, he turns his head to look at his fellow labor theorists standing behind him.

“This is my choice. And perhaps the only choice we have been given. Comrades. Do you agree?”

No one nodded overtly.

But neither did anyone vehemently disagree.

Tacit agreement.

Karl Renaro chuckled at the sight, then turned his gaze back to me.

“I never thought I’d say this… What is the name of the administrative organization we’ll be working for? Since it’s filled with terrorists and lawbreakers… the Terror Department?”

“There’s a more fitting name, don’t you think?”

I answered, gripping Renaro’s hand even tighter as he asked with a self-deprecating tone.

“The Ministry of Employment and Labor.”